


as vernal night should be

by Arianne, graiai, patrexes



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alisaie FUCKS, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cunnilingus, F/F, Loss of Virginity, Outdoor Sex, Overstimulation, Vaginal Fisting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:13:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22518310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arianne/pseuds/Arianne, https://archiveofourown.org/users/graiai/pseuds/graiai, https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrexes/pseuds/patrexes
Summary: In whichShadowbringers’ most memorable unnamed NPC loses her virginity to a dashing prince.
Relationships: Distraught Damsel/Alisaie Leveilleur
Comments: 19
Kudos: 52
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	as vernal night should be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackOfNone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/gifts).



> > The round Sun’s sinking scarlet rim  
> In vapour hideth he,  
> The darkling hours are cool and dim  
> As vernal night should be.  
> 
> 
> — William Allingham, 1854 

When Alisaie beamed she was more beautiful than the twinkling starlight; her grin outshone the lamps of the Pendants, bright as the Crystal Tower itself. Dida had seen glimpses of it when something in the geometries she pored over night and day had come together. But those were mere flashes, and far outnumbered by her scowls, checking and rechecking her equations, tossing papers aside and starting anew with a single mind. Some days Dida had found her unmoved from breakfast ‘til supper; once, some hours past dawn, she had come across Alisaie slumped across her desk having worked herself to exhaustion, an open tome her pillow.

Early in her concern Dida had prepared a second mug of the tea Alisaie favored, a sharp-smelling shoumei that shed æther as it brewed and came out of a heavy bag marked _leannan tea: probably don’t drink_ in a steady hand. Glad to adhere to the warning herself—being no magical heroine, she would rather not try her luck drinking dead fairies—Dida had brewed oolong for herself as she made her best guess at the leannan tea’s preparation, then placed the mug on Alisaie’s desk, careful of the pages scrawled with notes in a rushed hand barely resembling words. Alisaie had noticed at once, and smiled warmly, offering her thanks and taking the mug between her hands as she returned to her reading.

Dida would surely have fallen for that smile had she not already been in love at their very first meeting, Alisaie the fairytale elven prince with æther sparkling over her skin and a confident grip on her delicate rapier and come to rescue _her_. Dida had always known that there were _heroes_ and there were _people_ , and suffered under no pretensions she was of the former; Alisaie, though, _she_ was a hero, the sort who must have saved thousands, who couldn’t possibly remember them all.

But when months later they crossed paths once more, she’d remembered Dida, and asked after her name. “A pleasure to meet you properly, Dida,” she had said, manner stately and a particular _intention_ curling around the word ‘properly’ that Dida clutched close to her heart and hoped against hope she had not imagined. “My name is Alisaie Leveilleur.”

In the coming weeks, Dida courted her hero’s attention bravely as she could muster: made her tea, lent an ear to her troubles—and despite knowing little and less of the arcanima Alisaie toiled with, more than once their conversations ended abruptly, Alisaie running off leaving _thank you, thank you_ s and _that’s it!_ s in her wake. Her dashing prince, as it turned out, really _had_ come out of a færie tale: “You’re not from Norvrandt, are you, Miss Alisaie?” one evening winning Dida a warm laugh, and “No—oh, here, let me show you,” in the elven woman’s odd, pretty lilt. They’d bent together then over a map of the known world, Alisaie’s fingers trailing ley lines to an expanse of waters in the far north, empty save for a sea monster coiling amidst the waves.

“I’m from a place called Sharlayan,” said Alisaie then. “It would be here, should you lay this map over top of a map of my own world.”

 _Her own world_. The world which the arcane geometries on which she worked so tirelessly were meant to return her to. First learning that this world was slowly killing her had made a selfish kind of heartbreak bloom in Dida’s chest—one she pushed down, resolute, every time she thought of it. Their time might be fleeting, but even a few months in Alisaie’s company was a precious gift Dida knew she would treasure the rest of her days: the memory of only the way her lips curled smiling around Dida’s name enough to make Dida feel as though she was floating.

By the time Dida herself had arrived to the Pendants common room that day, it was late morning and Alisaie was finishing off a mug of her questionably potable tea with a deep frown on her face, barely glancing up from her work: a pile of graphing paper on the desk, a pile of crumpled-up graphing paper on the floor, and a thick tome balanced atop her crossed legs, loose sheets tucked between nearly every page. Three more mugs and a skipped lunch later, Dida had her mind made up. When next Alisaie groaned aloud in her frustration, Dida summoned her bravado and said, “All right, Miss Alisaie, I’ve seen enough.”

Alisaie squinted up at her through her bangs. “What?” she said, soundly nothing short of despondent.

“You shan’t be getting anything done tonight. Not like this. Take off an evening, and return to this tomorrow with fresh eyes.” Dida could see the argument forming upon Alisaie’s tongue. “For me? We—we could make a date of it.”

Alisaie frowned, if possible, even deeper, staring down at her lap seemingly past the technical diagrams the tome was open to. “There is someone—” She shook her head. “There are those whose lives rely upon my ability to find the solution I _know_ exists in these pages. I mustn’t abandon their cause even for a night,” she paused then for an exhale nearly a sigh, “no matter how I might wish it otherwise.”

“You’ve made no headway in hours, and I dare say you’re too frustrated now for inspiration to strike,” Dida pressed. “Those you fight for would not begrudge you a few hours’ respite.” Hesitantly, then, “I certainly wouldn’t.”

“I—perhaps you’re right, Dida.” Alisaie closed the book in her lap. Taking in a deep breath, her whole chest heaving with it, she said, “A date, then, if you’ll have me.”

She would have had Alisaie to the farthest reaches of the Empty, the darkest depths of the Tempest; it would have been far too forward to say anything of the kind. “Oh, _always_ , Miss Alisaie. Shall we meet at the Dossal Gate in a bell’s time?” and despite the promise made, it was to her mild shock that Alisaie arrived with the sunset—another gift of hers Dida wasn’t sure she would ever grow used to.

⁂

Dida couldn’t look away from Alisaie’s lips as they talked, sitting atop a handmade quilt on the grass in Lakeland. They were stained darker than by her gloss, berry juice making its mark on her tongue and fingertips as well—Dida loved the look of it on her, carefree and powerful, the color not unlike she’d bled and wiped it away.

“Did you make this?” Alisaie asked, gesticulating with two large bites taken out of her sandwich. “The quilt, I mean, though the food is lovely.”

Dida felt herself blush. “Mmhmm.”

It was a story quilt she’d begun stitching together after the night first began its slow-creeping return to Norvrandt, and had she another blanket to take on this outing she’d surely have done, because Alisaie must have recognized herself amid the panels: a tiny geometric savior leveling her rapier at a sin eater between images of the frozen, roiling flood of light that was the Empty and her friend, the famed Warrior of Darkness, battling a Lightwarden.

“It’s amazing,” Alisaie said, even sounding sincere. “I don’t have anything like the patience to create something like this; it must have taken you ages!” With a playful light in her eyes, she added, “Talented hands, too.”

Dida grew ever more grateful for the dark, for the blush across her cheeks only deepened. “Not nearly as talented as yours must be,” she replied steadier than she felt, “to have such mastery over the sword. I tried to teach myself to use a knife once and it was nothing short of disastrous. I think I feared it more than my opponent in any would-be engagement might.”

Alisaie laughed. “Blades don’t come to every hand. Do you know how to throw a punch?” and when Dida shook her head, she went, “I could teach you, if you like.”

This offer found them on the grass beside their quilt, Alisaie shucking off her jacket as Dida awkwardly tucked the ragged hems of her skirts into her waistband, revealing her legs all the way up to her bony knees. It took only minutes for her to make an embarrassment of herself, tripping on not even a rock but just-slightly-uneven ground, as ground was often wont to be. “Perhaps I should—” she gasped as Alisaie offered her a hand up, “—stick to quilting.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Alisaie gently. “It takes time, you know.” She took a step yet closer, and knelt. Her small hands grasped each of Dida’s stockinged calves and coaxed her back to what Alisaie had called an open stance; Dida could hardly blame the correction for the tremble in her knees. “It was an old friend of mine who taught me, and I swear she had me on my back more often than not, especially at first.”

Oh, what Dida wouldn’t do to have Alisaie on her back beneath _her_. “Your friend must have been very skilled,” she said, carefully mild.

“She was. _Is_ ,” Alisaie said. “Heavens, I make it sound as if she’s dead. She’s not,” came the welcome clarification, “though since she’s become a politician her letters often claim otherwise.” She said ‘politician’ with a twist to her face like tasting something unpleasant. “I don’t envy her. She has barely any chance now to get outdoors and have a bit of fun.”

“You miss her,” Dida said, and while the realization was newly voiced, it was hardly new—of course Alisaie missed the friends and family in her own world. She’d spent months now poring over arcane geometries she freely admitted she reviled, all to get back to them. All to leave Norvrandt, and Dida, behind.

But Dida refused to indulge in pity when her lot was far better than most—and she, among those few who had lived to see night break over Lakeland, would no sooner deny Alisaie her grief than she would let envy sour their time together, fleeting though it may be. When she offered Alisaie help to her feet, Dida only cherished the warmth of Alisaie’s hand in her own. In the other she worried the cord of her necklace, that whose magic had first summoned Alisaie to her side.

“I do. I miss everyone fate has seen fit to wrest from me,” said Alisaie with the steel of a promise etched in the very structure of reality, a proclamation which would ever be true; then, no less resolute but softer without the ring of grief, “and I treasure those I yet have at my side.” With that Alisaie smoothed her dress (though it was not rumpled) and placed her feet deliberately, quite naturally falling back into her fighting stance. “You’ll be skilled as Lyse one day, if only you keep at it. Now. This time I want you to catch my wrist when I reach for you, and _twist_.”

Dida did her best to follow Alisaie’s instructions to the letter, posture a poor mimicry of Alisaie’s own. The turn of her feet felt unnatural, unsteady; a burn already building in some disused muscle of her thigh, tense and shaking as Dida tried to bend her knees the way Alisaie did with such effortless confidence. _Her_ thighs did not shake, the few ilms between the tops of her high boots and the hem of her skirt laying bare pale, hairless skin, firm and statue-still. If possible, Alisaie was even more beautiful like this, powerful and sure, flyaway hairs pasted to her jaw by beads of sweat. She had muscular arms belied by the narrow set of her shoulders, and breasts small as befitting her build—but she held herself as a woman grown in this as in all things, so that Dida at times felt but a girl in her presence, the years Alisaie had on her cast in sharp relief. Were this a romance, those strong arms would pull Dida into her lap to relieve her of her maidenhood on calloused fingers, those breasts an altar upon which to whisper her devotions.

Guilt painting a flush across her cheeks, Dida refocused on her appointed task only to seize Alisaie’s wrist as instructed but a half-second too late, just before her fist made contact with her ribs. With no time left to redirect the momentum, rather than parrying and letting her own acceleration serve as a counter-attack, Dida’s efforts only managed to drag Alisaie down with her as she fell. The impact scattered what thoughts the punch spared; the physics governing her failure lost upon Dida in favor of the slim fingers entwined in hers, Alisaie’s breath warm against her breastbone.

The tail of Alisaie’s braid brushed Dida’s cheek as she pinned her hand to the dirt in the process of clambering up to hands and knees. “Not quite,” said Alisaie faintly, smiling down at Dida. “Half there, though.”

She was, wasn’t she? Half there. Emboldened, Dida closed the gap between them.

Alisaie tasted of berries and vinaigrette, and it seemed that for every fumbling step Dida took Alisaie had an effortlessly practiced riposte: Dida did not so much give up control of their kiss as have it pried from her ever-willing hands. She clung to Alisaie, and was glad to have her lead the way.

It wasn’t that Dida was inexperienced, as such; she would wager that, orgasm for orgasm, partner for partner, she was far more storied than most of her peers. But it was in those selfsame stories the problem lay: all the novels in Norvrandt, with all the world-wise heroines, could not prepare her for the passion Alisaie brought to all she set herself to. Dida’s few kisses had all been chaste things, moments stolen behind trees and shops with village girls and her hands twisting in her own apron. They shared naught but a name with the way Alisaie’s teeth worried her lower lip, her slender hand slipping up Dida’s thigh.

“Is this all right?” Alisaie barely broke their kiss to ask, her lips brushing Dida’s as they formed the words.

Dida’s own failed her in the face of Alisaie all but confirming she meant to _have_ her, only nodding desperately, thinking loud as she could _please don’t stop, please kiss me again_. “I,” she tried, “there’s a vial of oil in the basket.”

She could _feel_ Alisaie’s smile against her skin, the burst of air from her silent laugh. “No need for that,” she murmured against Dida’s lips, her fingers brushing up between her legs, the drag of the linen of her shift achingly rough against hot, sensitive skin. “You’re already soaked, and I plan to taste you besides.”

“Oh,” Dida exhaled. A blush scorched her cheeks. “I thought it was meant to help. It’s just I’ve not—I’ve never actually—”

Alisaie sat back on Dida’s thighs as if she might want distance. Leveling a serious gaze, she said, “This isn’t too much, is it? I, I’m told I can come on somewhat strong.” Were it anyone else, Dida might have called the note in her voice apprehension.

Dida nearly dragged her back down to meet her lips once more in a kiss. “No, no,” she said instead, head swimming still from the promise, _I plan to taste you_ , and her voice coming faint where Alisaie’s had been dark with intention. “It’s quite—quite all right. Please,” she added, should she seem uncertain.

“You’ll be in good hands,” Alisaie promised, catching Dida’s eyes. Her pupils were dilated so wide there was barely a hint of blue. “I’m happy to get the oil if you’d like, but we shouldn’t have need of it,” she paused a moment, tilted her mouth in a smile, “unless you wanted one of those hands inside you.”

She was laughing at her own joke, and Dida felt as though the world had just been dragged out from under her feet. “Sorry,” she said, “sorry, you can _do_ that?” Two of Alisaie’s fingers were rubbing her through her skirts. She thought about those fingers pressing inside of her, about _all_ of Alisaie’s slim fingers inside her, the joint of her thumb pressing past her entrance, made taut by Alisaie filling her up, and Dida had never felt so daunted or so awed; never been so afraid to want something as badly as she did this, now that she knew it possible.

“You can,” Alisaie assured. She shifted her weight back to her knees rather than her elbows, so that she was bending over Dida, leaving her other hand free to loose Dida’s skirt and unlace her pair of bodies, revealing her worn shift beneath them. “It takes some doing, mind you, even with hands small as mine. But it’s certainly possible. I’ve had lovers who liked it.”

“Can we?” It came out of her mouth without thinking, but her momentary horror came to head with Alisaie’s expression, which could not be read as anything but _impressed_ , and it stopped dead in its tracks.

“Bold for a virgin, aren’t you?” Alisaie teased, bending low to press a kiss to her sternum.

It had gotten her this far. “And you weren’t?”

Alisaie’s lips quirked in a grin. “The first thing I ever put inside myself was the handle of a knife,” she confessed. The next thing Dida knew was Alisaie hiking up her shift and pulling it off over her head to bare Dida’s breasts to the cool night air, leaving her in only knee-high stockings and shoes. “Oh, look at you,” Alisaie breathed, reverence in her voice. She cupped Dida’s breast in one hand—the other curling possessive around her hip—and the feeling of her calloused thumb brushing across her nipple made Dida shiver. “You’re so beautiful, Dida.”

Dida pushed herself up on her elbows, the night air’s chill—bringing up goosebumps everywhere Alisaie’s hands were not on her—a salient reminder of how terribly exposed she was like this, bare and wanton where anyone might see her. “We’re outside,” she said dumbly. She’d known they would be, when first she had slipped a vial of oil in the picnic basket in case Alisaie might take her, but that had been little more than idle fantasy. This was _real_ , and the thrill was as much terror as it was excitement.

“No one will recognize us in the dark,” Alisaie promised with a kiss pressed to the corner of Dida’s mouth. She displaced Dida’s legs as she shifted, hooking one of Dida’s knees over her shoulder as she settled between Dida’s thighs and pressed a second kiss over her clit. Alisaie’s eyes flicked up to meet Dida’s, glittering in the starlight.

Both like and entirely unlike the sensation of rocking into her own hand, Alisaie’s tongue on her was—otherworldly. Were it a joke, Dida would feel badly for the low-hanging fruit, but it wasn’t a joke: it simply _was_. Even in her own inexperience, Dida could recognize Alisaie’s skill in this, effortlessly following every quaver of Dida’s thighs to new heights of pleasure, learning how to best reduce her to a bundle of sensation and a desperate, yearning ache. Dida could do little more than weather the onslaught, tipping her head back and biting down on her palm to muffle her cries. She watched the stars and wondered which would come to form her lover’s constellation: from Norvrandt’s very first nightfall, Dida had known as sure as gravity the star maps from before the Flood would be replaced with commemoration of its saviors.

Beneath her tongue Alisaie pressed fingers inside her, swift and sure, and the stars followed Dida behind her eyelids as they fell closed; she curled them upwards and had Dida shaking, a moan slipping out past her hand. She did not relent, expertly locating those places within her Dida herself could never manage, closing her lips about her, and at Dida’s next moan Alisaie tightened her hand, the one grasping Dida’s bare thigh just above her knee, helping her to let herself lay open when her body sought nothing more than to wrap her legs around Alisaie and hold her in place—and so Alisaie steadied Dida as climax took her, moans turning to cries, her hands clutching the grass at her sides.

And Alisaie—even in the lucid dream of her pleasure Alisaie only redoubled her efforts: Dida felt her tongue again, and pressure that could only have been slipping inside another finger, sending a jolt up Dida’s spine, Alisaie relentless in her quest to drag a reprise from her before Dida could so much as catch her breath.

But Alisaie took her no further than she could bear, gently stilling first her hand and then her tongue as Dida’s second orgasm crashed over her. Allowed a reprieve as she was wracked with the aftershocks of her need fulfilled, Dida caught a chill as Alisaie lifted her head, though her hand remained, Dida’s body clutching at her still in the wake of pleasure. Dida’s thighs were wet—they hadn’t had need of the oil after all, she thought absently as Alisaie turned her head, pressed a kiss to the thigh bent over her narrow shoulder. Dida consciously released the tension she found in it, and as she exhaled deeply Alisaie let it down to rest upon the quilt, bent and turned out so as to leave her vulnerable and open.

Dida opened her mouth, unsure of what she could say but sure she must say _something_ —only for Alisaie to relieve her of that burden as well, crawling up the length of Dida’s torso to catch her lips, her arm straining for the distance but clearly unwilling to let Dida go yet unfulfilled.

Their first kiss had been a battle, and Alisaie had won it surely as she had first won Dida’s heart; their second Dida surrendered, offering her mouth to Alisaie for the plundering. She could taste herself in the kiss, sharp as the copper hint of blood from the wreck Alisaie seemed intent to make of her lower lip. Dida, for her part, was content to indulge her.

The tang of her slick was fading as Alisaie attempted to find purchase against her hipbone without needing to slip her fingers free—a cost too high for her liking, it seemed, even leveled against her own desires. Instead, with a frustrated sound huffed into Dida’s receptive mouth, she caught up Dida’s hand in her grip and pressed it up between her own legs.

A layer of soaked linen separated Dida’s fingers from Alisaie’s needy clit—even through it, Dida could feel Alisaie’s pulse in the palm of her hand. Alisaie rocked against her, the tiny, haphazard motions a seeming afterthought to her claim of Dida’s mouth, her lips, her throat. She could not know if the rasp of Alisaie’s teeth meant she would wear her marks, well above where the neckline of her shift might be—if all would see she had been ravished, each brush of her necklace against her bruises reminding her what it felt to belong to her prince.

Alisaie’s own release hit with only a quiet hitch of her breath and fingers twitching inside of Dida, and the thrill of _pleasing_ her as much as the movement sent new sparks coursing through Dida, racing up her spine as her cunt spasmed and need set alight as kindling.

There was no way to know if this was the first of many dalliances, or if Alisaie would come upon the key to her research tomorrow and leave Dida with only this memory of her hands, her mouth. And in a way, painful as it was, Dida hoped it would be, that Alisaie be spared more frustration and tedium, responsibility for her friends’ lives weighing down ever more heavily on her thin shoulders. If this was to be not only their first time but their last, then Dida would have it be _everything_.

Desire and grief and desperation suddenly, strangely crawled up from the pit of her stomach to lodge in her throat. “Your hand,” Dida choked out. “I want it, I want all of it. Please, give it to me, I, I don’t _care_ if it’s too much. I’ll take it, I’ll take it.”

“Far be it from me to refuse such a lovely girl her desires,” said Alisaie, her own voice unsteady, low and made raw with want of her. “You’ll take it,” she echoed, a promise. “Look, you already have half.”

Alisaie’s satisfied grin when Dida lifted her head had her pushing herself up on her elbows and then properly upright to spy between her spread legs. Even under the dim light of the stars, there was no mistaking the four fingers hilted in the gape of her cunt, two knuckles deep. Alisaie’s palm curled up nearly to press against her clit. Paradoxically, Dida yearned for respite as desperately as the touch.

“Do you want the rest?”

“ _Please_ ,” Dida breathed, more devotion in that single word than any prayer.

And it was, it _was_ too much, but when Alisaie pressed in deeper, working first her knuckles and then the tip of her thumb inside, Dida could want nothing more than _more_ : of Alisaie, of her touch when Dida would long ago have pulled her own fingers free, of her hand when four of her fingers had her so full already and even the most gentle movement inside of her felt to her ragged nerves as though it would break her, pleasure and pain one and the same. Thoughts addled and tongue heavy in her mouth, Dida could only offer a slur of _more, please, Alisaie, please, I need it_.

“You have it,” Alisaie murmured. “Everything I can give you, you have. Here,” and a hand curled behind her neck, leading her up, “look at yourself.”

“O-oh.” The sight stole Dida’s breath away, Alisaie’s arm buried inside of her cunt, swallowed up by the gape of her lips, ilms past the wrist.

“You’re gorgeous,” said Alisaie. “Absolutely _stunning_. Thank you for trusting me with this, Dida—with you.” And then, pressing a kiss to Dida’s forehead, she lowered her to the quilt once more and began finally to move inside of her, no longer working her way in but properly _fucking_ her on her fist.

Dida keened, arching her hips up—for more, for less, she didn’t know. She could feel the drag of Alisaie’s knuckles inside of her, touching what had never before _been_ touched, giving her more than she knew how to take. If it was gentle, somewhere earlier amid chasing completion Dida had lost sight of it. Alisaie’s hand set every nerve singing, and Dida didn’t know what she felt, only that she _felt_. “It’s s-s-s—” she tried, and failed, and gasped for a press of Alisaie’s fist against what must have been the mouth of her womb, “it’s so much.”

“Too much?” asked Alisaie, stilling inside of her, and somehow that was nearly worse. Dida needed her, needed it, needed—something she couldn’t possibly put a name to.

“No, no, please,” she begged, clutching the hem of Alisaie’s dress, her hair, holding her close. Dida’s prince hovered above her on hands and knees, fist buried deep inside of her, her other hand on Dida’s cheek, thumb brushing the tears from her lower lids. “Please, I need it, I need it, I—”

“Shh,” Alisaie murmured, all strength and candor and compassion, every ilm the hero. “It’s all right. You’re safe with me. I’ve got you.”

Dida had nothing left to fear, no reason not to give in to abandon; she came apart in Alisaie’s arms, and Alisaie held her together.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
